Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Kremlin Now Telling Russians They Face a Fallling Standard of Living for Years to Come, Shelin Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, June 27 – “For the first
time in the 21st century, the [Russian] regime is seeking to
accustom its citizens to the thought that a worsening of living conditions is
not the result of ‘temporary difficulties’ but rather a [new] norm of life,”
according to Rosbalt commentator Sergey Shelin.

Although official statistics are
anything but trustworthy, he continues, and although the government deploys
them selectively in order to make itself look as good as possible, the
following pattern is obvious: production is rising slightly but because of
regime policies, ordinary Russians are paying for that by taking a serious hit
in their standard of living (profile.ru/pryamayarech/item/118101-luchshe-uzhe-ne-budet).

It is increasingly obvious who is
paying for Russia’s current economic difficulties, “the exhaustion of oil
dollars, the upsurge in military and security spending, sanctions and
counter-sanctions.” And “it is no less obvious who will be financing the two or
three percent growth in the economy” the Kremlin likes to talk about it.

It will be financed by the Russian
people, who thanks to all this and to the regime’s failures, are having to pay
higher prices for communal services, not getting inflation adjustments in their
pensions, and thus giving without the regime acknowledging it a forced “loan”
by the people to the regime.

Worse, Shelin says, with each
passing month, “the ordinary individual must pay more but will receive the same
or less” because “even if there is some growth in the economy,” little of it
will be distributed to him.

“For the Russian 21st
century, this logic is completely new,” the commentator continues. “From the
end of the 1990s to the beginning of the 2010s, the level of consumption in
Russia rose (according to official calculations) more than two and a half
times.” Even if one allows that some of this is exaggerated, this “jump” was
the greatest over more than the last century.

“Without this, one cannot possibly
understand the Putin regime” and the support it has received up to now, Shelin
argues.“For three decades, ordinary
people had suffered first stagnation and then growing poverty. And here finally
was a miracle.”But that is now in the
past, and the people are going to pay for what the regime has done and is
doing.

Given Moscow’s failure to create “free
and competitive capitalism,” there is no possibility of “major private
investment.” Who else can make the needed investments? The state, and where
will it get the money? “From its subjects,” who will also be forced to be
satisfied with domestic goods of far lower quality than imported ones.

“Is growth possible in such a
feudalized economy?” Shelin asks rhetorically and says that yes, “modest growth
is possible.” But it will be so modest that the population will get little or
nothing or even less than now once “the siloviki, the lobbyists, and the bureaucrats”
take their whack out of what comes in.

Russians increasingly understand
this, despite their well-earned reputation for putting up with whatever those
in power do, the commentator argues. Among the signs of change on the part of
the people are strikes, admittedly not too successful but enough to make the
regime fearful and willing to make what concessions it feels it can and must.

Demonstrations and protests are no
longer just events in the capitals but “in hundreds of other cities” where
people are prepared to assemble “again and again,” despite the efforts of the
powers that be to intimidate them and keep Russians from taking part lest they
lose their jobs or land in jail.

And repression, always the default
setting for the current regime, is increasingly ineffective because it is
increasingly transparent to the people what is going on; and they are angry: “Even
in their parallel reality, the bosses recognize that the anger of ordinary people
is growth literally from month to month.

This new reality from below is
forcing the regime to change course and to try to accustom its subjects “to see
in the growing poverty they are living with normal.”That attempt, Shelin says, should be “sent to
the museum of administrative utopias” because like all similar projects it is
doomed to fail sooner or later.